NCCIH Research Blog

Opioids are commonly prescribed for chronic pain, but what does the evidence say about their short- and long-term risks and benefits, and their potential for harm?

To shed light on this timely and complex question, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) is hosting Roger Chou, M.D., co-author of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, to present a lecture on Monday, October 17. Dr. Chou’s talk, “Opioids for Chronic Pain: Evidence, Guidelines, and Policy and Practice Implications,” will take place from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. ET in Building 10, Lipsett Auditorium, on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It also will be streamed live on Facebook and the NIH videocast site. The event is part of NCCIH’s Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series.

Dr. Chou is a professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University. Board certified in internal medicine, Dr. Chou is director of the Clinical Guidelines Development at the American Pain Society (APS). He serves as a member of the Clinical Guidelines Committees of the American College of Physicians and the APS. He is also lead investigator and director of the Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center. His research interests include evaluating and managing pain (including low-back pain, postoperative pain, and the use of opioids), disease screening and prevention, diagnostic test evaluation, and developing systematic reviews and clinical guidelines.

In his NCCIH lecture, Dr. Chou will review epidemiological data on opioid prescribing, the evidence on benefits and harms of opioid therapies, and the CDC opioids guideline for chronic pain. Pain and its management are a top scientific interest and priority at NCCIH, where our particular focus is nonpharmacologic interventions.

We hope you can join us for what we anticipate will be a very interesting lecture.